Anthony Smith: From near death to nearly in UFC and his chance to prove me wrong

I was flying back to Las Vegas after a color commentary gig at an M-1 Global event in Atlantic City. Smith had attended the same event, where he cornered teammate Josh Rave in a decision loss to future Bellator champion Zach Makovsky, and was on his way back to Nebraska. Smith and I ended up in the same terminal facing flight delays in our journeys back home, and we eventaully struck up a conversation about the sport at the center of both of our lives, mixed martial arts.

At 22 years old and a with losing career record, “Lionheart” talked about MMA with unquestionable passion. But as we waited for our respective connecting flights to finally depart at Philadelphia International Airport, I had trouble believing that a fighter mired in a four-fight losing skid was ever going to make it to the big time, as Smith swore he would.

Now Smith is six weeks away from a date with Roger Gracie and what he hopes is a ticket into the UFC.

“A lot of it was mental,” Smith told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) about the 5-6 start to his career. “I turned pro at 19 years old. I was just a young kid, and I didn’t have a whole lot of direction. The gym situation in Omaha at the time was a little sketchy. There was kind of a beef going between the gyms, and the place where I’m at now, Premier Combat Center, wasn’t really solidified yet. I was bouncing around to different places and just couldn’t get settled in at one place.”

In fairness, Smith ran up against a few tough customers to open his career. Jake Hecht went on to the UFC. Charley Lynch was selected for “The Ultimate Fighter 11.” Mike Pitz is still undefeated. But Smith remained undaunted, and while success didn’t come quickly, he never considered walking away from the sport.

“I was fighting really, really tough dudes,” Smith said. “It wasn’t like I was losing to nobodies. I wasn’t getting dominated. I was just undertrained, and they were all competitive fights, so I had that feeling that this could all still work, and I stayed true to myself.”

Of course, Smith’s slow start wasn’t just about his training practices or his choice of opponents. The youngster’s struggles included a few internal demons that almost killed him.

“A lot of it was just kind of what was kind of going on in life,” Smith said. “I was in a bad relationship. I thought I was in love with the person and all that. It ended up falling apart. In my life, especially as a young teen, every time something didn’t go my way, I turned to drinking. I just didn’t know how else to deal with it.”

And so it was on May 22, 2009, nearly one year before our paths crossed in that Philadelphia airport.

“I almost killed myself”

“I didn’t have a dad growing up,” Smith explained. “My grandpa pretty much helped raise me. He died, and then a couple years later all this stuff starts happening, and I never really dealt with my grandpa dying. I know it sounds stupid, but he was like my hero. Then all these other things started happening, and I was out partying with friends, and I ended up getting in this really bad car accident trying to make it home.

“The car accident was actually at 11 o’clock in the afternoon. I was still drinking from the night before. They found me unresponsive after the wreck. I hit a house. It was pretty bad. I almost killed myself”

Smith woke up in a hospital with a ventilator in his mouth. He had no recollection of the accident that was responsible for his condition.

“I remember waking up on life support and seeing my mom and a couple of close friends around me, and I was trying to remember what my last memory was,” Smith recalled. “My last memory was at 6 a.m., and I was still out driving around, partying. I remember wiggling all my fingers and toes and thinking, ‘All right, I’m not paralyzed.’

“I didn’t know what really happened, so my mom gave me her phone, and we were typing out messages to each other since I couldn’t talk. The first thing I asked is, ‘What happened?’ She said, ‘You got in a car accident.’ I didn’t really want to ask, but I typed, ‘Did I hurt anybody?’ The whole room started crying. It was crazy because they were like, ‘Wow, he really doesn’t know if he killed anybody or not.’ Obviously, I didn’t. I was by myself. I didn’t hit anybody. I just wrecked it in a one-car accident. I fell asleep on a gravel road while drunk driving, and I went in a ditch and totaled it.”

It was a life-changing moment for the man they call “Lionheart.” It was rock bottom, and he knew there had to be a way up.

“I was really fortunate,” Smith said. “I didn’t take any really crazy damage. I had a fractured cheek bone. My lungs were all messed up. My face was a mess. I had stitches all over. One whole side of my nostril was completely open. It was crazy. But I was really fortunate not to have any long-term damage.

“When they found me, I was unresponsive. When I came back and started to wake up, I was hammered. My alcohol level was like a 0.295. I freaked out, so they sedated me, and that’s how I ended up on a ventilator. It was crazy.”

After what could have been a fatal crash, Smith spent a week in the hospital. Incredibly, he returned to fighting less than one month later. Things didn’t go his way in the cage, and he suffered the third of what would eventually be four-straight losses. But Smith said his personal life was steadily improving.

“After that wreck, even before court and all that, I went into treatment, and we ended up finding out that it wasn’t really a drinking problem; it was more a problem that was going on in my own head, and drinking was my way of releasing it,” Smith said. “Some people eat, some people use drugs, some people gamble and some people drink. A lot of times, that isn’t the actual problem. There’s a problem that’s causing that problem. I dealt with that and went on with life.

“I haven’t any problems since then. In the last three months, I’ve even started talking to youth prisons and even adult prisons with younger offenders who have an outdate coming up. I’m just trying to pay it forward.”

Are you ready?

Less than one week after I met Smtih, he snapped his losing skid with a 22-second knockout victory. In fact, he went on a 9-1 tear that earned him a spot on a pair of Strikeforce Challengers card. Along the way, he met a new girlfriend and the couple had a daughter. As with most new fathers, Smith considered his child a blessing. Of course, the timing wasn’t exactly ideal, as she was born less than two weeks before he was scheduled to take on dangerous striker Adlan Amagov at Strikeforce Challengers 20 in November 2011.

Smith missed weight for the fight, registering 188 pounds for the middleweight matchup, and he lost the fight via first-round knockout.

“I was on a pretty good run, and the loss was terrible,” Smith said. “I had a baby right before that, so I think that had a lot to do with it – not that I’m making any excuses because Amagov is a really, really tough guy. But I remember the ref looking at us and looking at him and saying, ‘Are you ready?’ and then looking at me and saying, ‘Are you ready?’ and I remember thinking, ‘No, I’m not.’ But you’re already there, so what are you going to do? I remember thinking, ‘No, I’m not ready at all. I want to be home with my new baby.’

“It was our first baby, and my girlfriend’s due date was actually the date of the fight. She went in a week-and-a-half early, so at least I didn’t miss it. But I only got to spend a couple of days with her, and then I had to go. That sucked. I missed weight because I had been in the hospital, eating hospital food. It was terrible. Then I lose, which sucked, but the money that I made losing still was able to keep us home with the baby for a long time, which was cool.”

That fight card turned out to be Strikeforce’s final Challengers Series event, and after hosting 16 fight cards in 2011, the promotion held just five events in 2012. Smith was still under contract with Strikeforce, but like many of the promotion’s athletes, he simply wasn’t sure when he would fight again. Rather than sit around and hope for the best, Smith said he decided to take a more active approach to his career.

“I just went back to the regional scene,” Smith said. “It wasn’t even that they told me that I had to do that. That was actually my own choice. They didn’t say to me, ‘We don’t have a spot for you. Maybe you should take a fight somewhere else.’ It was just, ‘Maybe this day, maybe that day.’ I was like, ‘Well, then screw it. Can I fight somewhere else?’ They were cool with it, so that’s what I did.

“I think a lot of the reason people won’t do that is because no one wants to take that risk. No one wants to lose because no one really knows what’s going to happen if you take that loss. You could get cut. Who knows?”

Fortunately for Smith, he didn’t lose. Instead, after a pair of stoppage victories on smaller shows, he was invited back to Strikeforce for a bout with highly-touted prospect Lumumba Sayers on the undercard of this past August’s “Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman” event. Smith seized the opportunity and scored a first-round submission win.

“They can’t tell me no forever”

In the 32 months since I met Anthony Smith, he’s put together a 12-2 run. All 12 of those victories came by stoppage, and incredibly, none of his 25 career fights have ever made it to the final bell. This past week, it was revealed he will next fight in January against a member of MMA’s first family, Roger Gracie, at what is expected to serve as Strikeforce’s final event.

In that Philadelphia airport, such an opportunity seemed to me like an impossibility. But things change quickly in this sport, and Smith insists that besides that passion for MMA I saw from our first conversation, everything else has changed.

“It’s crazy to look where I used to be – sitting in that airport, four losses in a row, to fighting Roger Gracie right now,” Smith said. “That’s just crazy to me.

“A lot of it is maturity. I’m an adult now. Even back then, my age showed that I was an adult, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t acting like an adult, and I wasn’t doing the things I needed to be doing. Even in the last year, a lot has changed. I’ve come a long way. I’m a family man now. I’m not doing the things I used to do. I still have a casual drink here and there, but I’m not out partying. I’m not out chasing girls and trying to be cool. I’ve got a wonderful girlfriend at home and a daughter. It’s work, church and home for me, and I’m just living a completely different life than I was back then.”

And with his personal life in order, now it’s time for Smith to devote his focus to professional success.

“The short-term goal is to make my family as comfortable as I possible can,” Smith said. “I would love for my girlfriend to be able to stay home and focus on school or whatever she wants to do. That’s the main goal: to support my family while doing what I love to do. I’m already doing that, but it would be nice instead of renting a house to go buy a house and have ‘our house.’ Then the main goal is probably everyone’s goal: I want to be a world champion. I want someone to call me the best. I want to be the best, and I want everyone in the world to know it.”

Beating Gracie won’t earn Smith a shot at Anderson Silva, but a positive result could very well earn him a spot on the UFC roster. What seemed incomprehensible less than three years ago could very well turn into reality. Smith insists it will, whether it be now or later.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is probably the greatest female fighter on the planet, which is a tremendous feat. So why are we seemingly so obsessed with arguing about whether she could beat up men?